Fashion Ethics: The High Cost of Low Cost Clothing
After watching the Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt program and working on your Picktochart, the time has come to think long and deep about your response to Fashion Ethics. Would you pay more for clothes if they were manufactured ethically i.e. produced in a factory with fair working conditions and wages? What would ethical shopping look like to you?
Over the last couple of weeks, we have examined the human cost of the Industrial Revolution (life in a coal mine, steam engine power, life in an overcrowded city, and making cheap clothing), stating that U.S. fashion companies design their merchandise in the United States and then outsource the labor in countries like Bangladesh and Colombia where workers are paid very little to sew the garments. Has the tragedy in Bangladesh changed your thinking? Have you made the connection between the cost of clothes and the conditions of these factories? Are you ready to acknowledge the human costs of this relentless fashion treadmill and shop ethically? If workers are to be paid a living wage, would you be prepared to pay more for clothes?
Take a look at the label on your latest bargain, those trendy, cheap items from stores such as H&M, Esprit, Lee, Wrangler, Nike, J.C. Penney and Wal-Mart. Where were these clothes made? Or, do you even care who made them, how they were made, or where they were made?
In her book Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, journalist Elizabeth L. Cline describes buying “seven pairs of $7 shoes” at Kmart and admits to being a “reformed fast-fashion junkie. She writes “because of low prices, chasing trends is now a mass activity, accessible to anyone with a few bucks to spare.” Fashion trends dangle the constant lure of display and self branding in front of us and the drive to keep up becomes relentless. Quality is not the issue, but the fear of losing face in the social mirror.
There is now an “ethical fashion” movement and clothing companies like H&M, for example, has a “Conscious Collection.” American Apparel and Fair Trade Fashion offer natural, organic cotton or hand made clothing and sweatshop free production. Is then organic and locally produced clothing a way of shopping ethically? Does it also become a marketing strategy? Another option is to follow Cline’s advice to “make, alter and mend” by which she means buying recycled clothes and taking care of the clothes we have, rather than discarding clothing on a whim because they are cheap and easily replaceable when the fashion moves on.
This could be a sustainable solution to the damage to the environment of endless stuff (thank you Industrial Revolution), which is disposable and easily replaced by yet more and cheaper versions of the same. But is it a choice you are ready to make?
In the following blog, I want you to think carefully about the Cost of Change and how it relates to the manufacturing world of cheap labor and cheap clothing. Please use academic writing and allow your words to speak for you. Of course, your colleagues and I will be reading these and I will be reading them aloud to the class.
This Blog posting comes due at 8:00 am on Monday, November 9th.
Please post your discussion in the Add Discussion box below. Use "Fashion Ethics" for a title and be sure your name is included, so that you will earn the points.
Fashion Ethics: The High Cost of Low Cost Clothing
After watching the Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt program and working on your Picktochart, the time has come to think long and deep about your response to Fashion Ethics. Would you pay more for clothes if they were manufactured ethically i.e. produced in a factory with fair working conditions and wages? What would ethical shopping look like to you?
Over the last couple of weeks, we have examined the human cost of the Industrial Revolution (life in a coal mine, steam engine power, life in an overcrowded city, and making cheap clothing), stating that U.S. fashion companies design their merchandise in the United States and then outsource the labor in countries like Bangladesh and Colombia where workers are paid very little to sew the garments. Has the tragedy in Bangladesh changed your thinking? Have you made the connection between the cost of clothes and the conditions of these factories? Are you ready to acknowledge the human costs of this relentless fashion treadmill and shop ethically? If workers are to be paid a living wage, would you be prepared to pay more for clothes?
Take a look at the label on your latest bargain, those trendy, cheap items from stores such as H&M, Esprit, Lee, Wrangler, Nike, J.C. Penney and Wal-Mart. Where were these clothes made? Or, do you even care who made them, how they were made, or where they were made?
In her book Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, journalist Elizabeth L. Cline describes buying “seven pairs of $7 shoes” at Kmart and admits to being a “reformed fast-fashion junkie. She writes “because of low prices, chasing trends is now a mass activity, accessible to anyone with a few bucks to spare.” Fashion trends dangle the constant lure of display and self branding in front of us and the drive to keep up becomes relentless. Quality is not the issue, but the fear of losing face in the social mirror.
There is now an “ethical fashion” movement and clothing companies like H&M, for example, has a “Conscious Collection.” American Apparel and Fair Trade Fashion offer natural, organic cotton or hand made clothing and sweatshop free production. Is then organic and locally produced clothing a way of shopping ethically? Does it also become a marketing strategy?
Another option is to follow Cline’s advice to “make, alter and mend” by which she means buying recycled clothes and taking care of the clothes we have, rather than discarding clothing on a whim because they are cheap and easily replaceable when the fashion moves on.
This could be a sustainable solution to the damage to the environment of endless stuff (thank you Industrial Revolution), which is disposable and easily replaced by yet more and cheaper versions of the same. But is it a choice you are ready to make?
In the following blog, I want you to think carefully about the Cost of Change and how it relates to the manufacturing world of cheap labor and cheap clothing. Please use academic writing and allow your words to speak for you. Of course, your colleagues and I will be reading these and I will be reading them aloud to the class.
This Blog posting comes due at 8:00 am on Monday, November 9th.
Please post your discussion in the Add Discussion box below. Use "Fashion Ethics" for a title and be sure your name is included, so that you will earn the points.